New Delhi : 28.3.2022, Monday
Supreme Court grants Centre time to
respond to plea on Hindus’ minority status
The Supreme Court on Monday
said it will hear the contentious issue of granting minority status to Hindus
in states where they are fewer in number on May 10.
After the central government
sought more time from the Supreme Court to file its response to a host of
petitions that want a state to be considered as the basis for determining
religious and linguistic minorities, the apex court said on Monday it will hear
the contentious issue of granting minority status to Hindus in states where
they are fewer in number on May 10.
The court was hearing a public
interest litigation (PIL) filed by advocate and Delhi Bharatiya Janata Party
leader Ashwini Kumar Upadhyay seeking identification of religious minority
communities at the state level “to ensure that only those religious and
linguistic groups which are socially, economically, politically non-dominant
and numerically inferior, can establish and administer educational institutions
of their choice.”
As a similar issue was pending
consideration before three other high courts, the top court had earlier allowed
those matters to be transferred to this court from the respective high courts
of Delhi, Gauhati and Meghalaya.
As the petition came up for
hearing, solicitor general Tushar Mehta, appearing for the Centre, told the
court that he was yet to go through the response submitted by the ministry of
minority affairs on Sunday.
The bench of justices Sanjay
Kishan Kaul and MM Sundresh allowed Mehta four weeks to file a comprehensive
response on behalf of all concerned ministries on the issues raised in the
petition.
Upadhyay’s petition challenged
the validity of Section 2(f) of the National Commission for Minority
Educational Institutions (NCMEI) Act, 2004, and raised an issue that if the
central government could restrict minority benefits to the six religious
minority communities, it should have a corresponding power to declare Hindus as
minorities in states where they have significantly less population.
It pointed out that Hindus are
merely 1% in Ladakh, 2.75% in Mizoram, 2.77% in Lakshadweep, 4% in Jammu and
Kashmir, 8.74% in Nagaland, 11.52% in Meghalaya, 29% in Arunachal Pradesh,
38.49% in Punjab, and 41.29% in Manipur.